On Thursday, Apple announced that it has opened its iPhone repair process to include used components. Starting this fall, customers and independent repair shops will be able to fix the handset using compatible components.
Components that don’t require configuration (such as volume buttons) were already capable of being harvested from used devices. Today’s news adds all components — including the battery, display and camera — which Apple requires to be configured for full functionality. Face ID will not be available when the feature first rolls out, but it is coming down the road.
At launch, the feature will be available solely for the iPhone 15 line on both the supply and receiving ends of the repair. That caveat is due, in part, to limited interoperability between the models. In many cases, parts from older phones simply won’t fit. The broader limitation that prohibited the use of components from used models comes down to a process commonly known as “parts paring.”
Apple has defended the process, stating that using genuine components is an important aspect of maintaining user security and privacy. Historically, the company hasn’t used the term “parts pairing” to refer to its configuration process, but it acknowledges that phrase has been widely adopted externally. It’s also aware that the term is loaded in many circles.
“‘Parts pairing’ is used a lot outside and has this negative connotation,” Apple senior vice president of hardware engineering, John Ternus, tells TechCrunch. “I think it’s led people to believe that we somehow block third-party parts from working, which we don’t. The way we look at it is, we need to know what part is in the device, for a few reasons. One, we need to authenticate that it’s a real Apple biometric device and that it hasn’t been spoofed or something like that. … Calibration is the other one.”
Right-to-repair advocates have accused Apple of hiding behind parts pairing as an excuse to stifle user-repairability. In January, iFixit called the process the “biggest threat to repair.” The post paints a scenario wherein an iPhone user attempts to harvest a battery from a friend’s old device, only to be greeted with a pop-up notification stating, “Important Battery Message. Unable to verify this iPhone has a genuine Apple battery.”
It’s a real scenario and surely one that’s proven confusing for more than a few people. After all, a battery that was taken directly from another iPhone is clearly the real deal.
Today’s news is a step toward resolving the issue on newer iPhones, allowing the system to effectively verify that the battery being used is, in fact, genuine.
“Parts pairing, regardless of what you call it, is not evil,” says Ternus. “We’re basically saying, if we know what module’s in there, we can make sure that when you put our module in a new phone, you’re gonna get the best quality you can. Why’s that a bad thing?”
The practice took on added national notoriety when it was specifically targeted by Oregon’s recently passed right-to-repair bill. Apple, which has penned an open letter in support of a similar California bill, heavily criticized the bill’s parts pairing clause.
“Apple supports a consumer’s right to repair, and we’ve been vocal in our support for both state and federal legislation,” a spokesperson for the company noted in March. “We support the latest repair laws in California and New York because they increase consumer access to repair while keeping in place critical consumer protections. However, we’re concerned a small portion of the language in Oregon Senate Bill 1596 could seriously impact the critical and industry-leading privacy, safety and security protections that iPhone users around the world rely on every day.”
While aspects of today’s news will be viewed as a step in the right direction among some repair advocates, it seems unlikely that it will make the iPhone wholly compliant with the Oregon bill. Apple declined to offer further speculation on the matter.
Biometrics — including fingerprint and facial scans — continue to be a sticking point for the company.
“You think about Touch ID and Face ID and the criticality of their security because of how much of our information is on our phones,” says Ternus. “Our entire life is on our phones. We have no way of validating the performance of any third-party biometrics. That’s an area where we don’t enable the use of third-party modules for the key security functions. But in all other aspects, we do.”
It doesn’t seem coincidental that today’s news is being announced within weeks of the Oregon bill’s passage — particularly given that these changes are set to roll out in the fall. The move also appears to echo Apple’s decision to focus more on user-repairability with the iPhone 14, news that arrived amid a rising international call for right-to-repair laws.
Apple notes, however, that the processes behind this work were set in motion some time ago. Today’s announcement around device harvesting, for instance, has been in the works for two years.
For his part, Ternus suggests that his team has been focused on increasing user access to repairs independent of looming state and international legislation. “We want to make things more repairable, so we’re doing that work anyway,” he says. “To some extent, with my team, we block out the news of the world, because we know what we’re doing is right, and we focus on that.”
Overall, the executive preaches a kind of right tool for the right job philosophy to product design and self-repair.
“Repairability in isolation is not always the best answer,” Ternus says. “One of the things that I worry about is that people get very focused as if repairability is the goal. The reality is repairability is a means to an end. The goal is to build products that last, and if you focus too much on [making every part repairable], you end up creating some unintended consequences that are worse for the consumer and worse for the planet.”
Also announced this morning is an enhancement to Activation Lock, which is designed to deter thieves from harvesting stolen phones for parts. “If a device under repair detects that a supported part was obtained from another device with Activation Lock or Lost Mode enabled,” the company notes, “calibration capabilities for that part will be restricted.”
Ternus adds that, in addition to harvesting used iPhones for parts, Apple “fundamentally support[s] the right for people to use third-party parts as well.” Part of that, however, is enabling transparency.
“We have hundreds of millions of iPhones in use that are second- or third-hand devices,” he explains. “They’re a great way for people to get into the iPhone experience at a lower price point. We think it’s important for them to have the transparency of: was a repair done on this device? What part was used? That sort of thing.”
When iOS 15.2 arrived in November 2021, it introduced a new feature called “iPhone parts and service history.” If your phone is new and has never been repaired, you simply won’t see it. If one of those two qualifications does apply to your device, however, the company surfaces a list of switched parts and repairs in Settings.
Ternus cites a recent UL Solutions study as evidence that third-party battery modules, in particular, can present a hazard to users.
“We don’t block the use of third-party batteries,” he says. “But we think it’s important to be able to notify the customer that this is or isn’t an authentic Apple battery, and hopefully that will motivate some of these third parties to improve the quality.”
While the fall update will open harvesting up to a good number of components, Apple has no plans to sell refurbished parts for user repairs.